This book traces the figure of the alchemist in Western literature from its first appearance in Dante down to the present. From the beginning alchemy has had two aspects: exoteric or operative (the ...
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This book traces the figure of the alchemist in Western literature from its first appearance in Dante down to the present. From the beginning alchemy has had two aspects: exoteric or operative (the transmutation of baser metals into gold) and esoteric or speculative (the spiritual transformation of the alchemist himself). From Dante to Ben Jonson, during the centuries when the belief in exoteric alchemy was still strong, writers in many literatures treated alchemists with ridicule. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, as that belief weakened, the figure of the alchemist disappeared, even though Protestant poets in England and Germany were still fond of alchemical images. But when eighteenth-century science undermined alchemy, the figure of the alchemist began to emerge again in literature—now as a humanitarian hero or as a spirit striving for sublimation. As scholarly interest in alchemy intensified, writers were attracted to the figure of the alchemist and his quest for power. The fin de siècle witnessed a further transformation as some poets saw in the alchemist a symbol for the poet and others a manifestation of religious spirit. During the interwar years many writers turned to the figure of the alchemist as a spiritual model or as a national figurehead. This tendency, theorized by C. G. Jung, inspired after World War II a popularization of the figure in the novel. In sum: the figure of the alchemist in literature provides a seismograph for major shifts in intellectual and cultural history.Less

The Alchemist in Literature : From Dante to the Present

Theodore Ziolkowski

Published in print: 2015-10-01

This book traces the figure of the alchemist in Western literature from its first appearance in Dante down to the present. From the beginning alchemy has had two aspects: exoteric or operative (the transmutation of baser metals into gold) and esoteric or speculative (the spiritual transformation of the alchemist himself). From Dante to Ben Jonson, during the centuries when the belief in exoteric alchemy was still strong, writers in many literatures treated alchemists with ridicule. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, as that belief weakened, the figure of the alchemist disappeared, even though Protestant poets in England and Germany were still fond of alchemical images. But when eighteenth-century science undermined alchemy, the figure of the alchemist began to emerge again in literature—now as a humanitarian hero or as a spirit striving for sublimation. As scholarly interest in alchemy intensified, writers were attracted to the figure of the alchemist and his quest for power. The fin de siècle witnessed a further transformation as some poets saw in the alchemist a symbol for the poet and others a manifestation of religious spirit. During the interwar years many writers turned to the figure of the alchemist as a spiritual model or as a national figurehead. This tendency, theorized by C. G. Jung, inspired after World War II a popularization of the figure in the novel. In sum: the figure of the alchemist in literature provides a seismograph for major shifts in intellectual and cultural history.

When Louis XVIII returned to the throne in 1814, and again in 1815, France embarked upon a period of uneasy cohabitation between the old and the new. The writers of the age, who included ...
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When Louis XVIII returned to the throne in 1814, and again in 1815, France embarked upon a period of uneasy cohabitation between the old and the new. The writers of the age, who included Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, and Mme de Duras, agreed that they lived at a historical turning point, a transitional moment whose outcome, though still uncertain, would transform the French way of life—beginning with the French way of love. The literary works of the Bourbon Restoration ceaselessly return to the themes of love, marriage, and sexuality, partly as vital cultural questions in their own right, but also as a means of critiquing the unsatisfactory politics of the present and imagining the shape of the political future. In the literature of the Restoration, love and politics become entwined in a mutually metaphorical embrace. The Amorous Restoration, the first book in English devoted to literary and cultural life under the last Bourbon kings, considers this relationship in all its richness and many contradictions. Long neglected as a drab historical backwater, the Restoration emerges here as a vibrant era, one rife with sharp cultural and political disagreements, and possessed of an especially refined sense of allusion, discretion, and even humour. Drawing on literature, journalism, political writing, life writing, and gossip, The Amorous Restoration vividly recreates the erotic sensibilities of a pivotal moment in the transition from an amorous old regime to erotic—and political—modernity.Less

The Amorous Restoration : Love, Sex, and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century France

Andrew J. Counter

Published in print: 2016-09-29

When Louis XVIII returned to the throne in 1814, and again in 1815, France embarked upon a period of uneasy cohabitation between the old and the new. The writers of the age, who included Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, and Mme de Duras, agreed that they lived at a historical turning point, a transitional moment whose outcome, though still uncertain, would transform the French way of life—beginning with the French way of love. The literary works of the Bourbon Restoration ceaselessly return to the themes of love, marriage, and sexuality, partly as vital cultural questions in their own right, but also as a means of critiquing the unsatisfactory politics of the present and imagining the shape of the political future. In the literature of the Restoration, love and politics become entwined in a mutually metaphorical embrace. The Amorous Restoration, the first book in English devoted to literary and cultural life under the last Bourbon kings, considers this relationship in all its richness and many contradictions. Long neglected as a drab historical backwater, the Restoration emerges here as a vibrant era, one rife with sharp cultural and political disagreements, and possessed of an especially refined sense of allusion, discretion, and even humour. Drawing on literature, journalism, political writing, life writing, and gossip, The Amorous Restoration vividly recreates the erotic sensibilities of a pivotal moment in the transition from an amorous old regime to erotic—and political—modernity.

This book examines how major writers of the French Enlightenment discuss the social appropriateness of anger and gratitude in regulating social life. Defining the kinds of slight or favor that demand ...
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This book examines how major writers of the French Enlightenment discuss the social appropriateness of anger and gratitude in regulating social life. Defining the kinds of slight or favor that demand an angry or a grateful response became problematic in eighteenth-century France under the pressure of two contradictory developments which were both crucial to Enlightenment thinking about sociability. The first drew on the ideal of moral equality as it spread beyond the salons to the social world at large. Writers claimed for themselves an entitlement to anger at personal slight that had been hitherto reserved for aristocrats, and a respectful hearing for their indignation at public injustice despite their lack of official standing. The philosophes also argued their writing made them social benefactors in their own right, more deserving of their readers' gratitude than obliged to any patron. The second gave a new twist to longstanding philosophical notions about transcending emotional disturbance and dependence altogether. A personal ideal became a public goal as Enlightenment thinkers imagined a society where all significant social interaction was governed by the impersonal rule of law. Occasions for personal slight or obligation would disappear, and with them reasons for anger and gratitude. The same writers who justified their emotional claims also legitimized their cultural authority through displays of rationality and objectivity that indicated their own liberation from emotional bonds. Through analyses of works by Robert Challe, Marivaux, Rousseau, and Diderot, this book shows how the tension between these two rhetorics is crucial to the creativity of French Enlightenment writing.Less

Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer

Patrick Coleman

Published in print: 2010-12-01

This book examines how major writers of the French Enlightenment discuss the social appropriateness of anger and gratitude in regulating social life. Defining the kinds of slight or favor that demand an angry or a grateful response became problematic in eighteenth-century France under the pressure of two contradictory developments which were both crucial to Enlightenment thinking about sociability. The first drew on the ideal of moral equality as it spread beyond the salons to the social world at large. Writers claimed for themselves an entitlement to anger at personal slight that had been hitherto reserved for aristocrats, and a respectful hearing for their indignation at public injustice despite their lack of official standing. The philosophes also argued their writing made them social benefactors in their own right, more deserving of their readers' gratitude than obliged to any patron. The second gave a new twist to longstanding philosophical notions about transcending emotional disturbance and dependence altogether. A personal ideal became a public goal as Enlightenment thinkers imagined a society where all significant social interaction was governed by the impersonal rule of law. Occasions for personal slight or obligation would disappear, and with them reasons for anger and gratitude. The same writers who justified their emotional claims also legitimized their cultural authority through displays of rationality and objectivity that indicated their own liberation from emotional bonds. Through analyses of works by Robert Challe, Marivaux, Rousseau, and Diderot, this book shows how the tension between these two rhetorics is crucial to the creativity of French Enlightenment writing.

Time matters to all of us. It dominates everyday discourse: diaries, schedules, clocks, working hours, opening times, appointments, weekdays and weekends, national holidays, religious festivals, ...
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Time matters to all of us. It dominates everyday discourse: diaries, schedules, clocks, working hours, opening times, appointments, weekdays and weekends, national holidays, religious festivals, birthdays, and anniversaries. But how do we, as unique individuals, subjectively experience time? The slowness of an hour in a boring talk, the swiftness of a summer holiday, the fleetingness of childhood, the endless wait for pivotal news: these are experiences to which we all can relate and of which we commonly speak. How can a writer not only report such experiences but also conjure them up in words so that readers share the frustration, the excitement, the anticipation, are on tenterhooks with a narrator or character, or in melancholic mourning for a time long since passed which we never experienced ourselves? This book suggests that the evocation of subjective temporal experience occurs in every sentence, on every page, at every plot turn, in any narrative. It offers a new template for understanding narrative time that combines close readings with analysis of the structural overview. It enables new ways of reading Thomas Mann, but also suggests new ways of conceptualizing narrative time in any literary work, not only in Mann’s fiction and not only in texts that foreground the narration of time. The range of Mann’s novels, novellas, and short stories is compared with other nineteenth- and twentieth-century works in German and in English to suggest a comprehensive approach to considering time in narrative.Less

The Architecture of Narrative Time : Thomas Mann and the Problems of Modern Narrative

Erica Wickerson

Published in print: 2017-06-08

Time matters to all of us. It dominates everyday discourse: diaries, schedules, clocks, working hours, opening times, appointments, weekdays and weekends, national holidays, religious festivals, birthdays, and anniversaries. But how do we, as unique individuals, subjectively experience time? The slowness of an hour in a boring talk, the swiftness of a summer holiday, the fleetingness of childhood, the endless wait for pivotal news: these are experiences to which we all can relate and of which we commonly speak. How can a writer not only report such experiences but also conjure them up in words so that readers share the frustration, the excitement, the anticipation, are on tenterhooks with a narrator or character, or in melancholic mourning for a time long since passed which we never experienced ourselves? This book suggests that the evocation of subjective temporal experience occurs in every sentence, on every page, at every plot turn, in any narrative. It offers a new template for understanding narrative time that combines close readings with analysis of the structural overview. It enables new ways of reading Thomas Mann, but also suggests new ways of conceptualizing narrative time in any literary work, not only in Mann’s fiction and not only in texts that foreground the narration of time. The range of Mann’s novels, novellas, and short stories is compared with other nineteenth- and twentieth-century works in German and in English to suggest a comprehensive approach to considering time in narrative.

This book explores the ways in which exile concentrates the aesthetics of two generations of 19th-century British writers who felt forced to leave England and chose to live in Italy. Focusing on the ...
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This book explores the ways in which exile concentrates the aesthetics of two generations of 19th-century British writers who felt forced to leave England and chose to live in Italy. Focusing on the Pisan circle (Byron, the Shelleys, Leigh Hunt, and the Williamses), the next generation of exiles, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and the mobile intermediaries who connected both groups (Anna Jameson, Walter Savage Landor, and Lady Blessington), the book traces the complex legacy of Byron and the Shelleys for the English in Italy in the 19th century. Self-consciously ostracized, singly or in groups, these writers favoured discursive modes of literary creation and used the disjunctions of exile to probe, challenge, and seek answers to compelling questions about literature, art, religion, law, history, and politics. Exile has always been a dialogical condition, fostering reflection on the difference between here and there, then and now, presence and absence. This book re-examines the literary traditions that influence the layered forms of exiled writing. Looking at the interaction of classical and Middle-Age writing with the mixed genres produced by English writers who rejected insular domestic mores and immersed themselves in European culture, the book offers a fresh approach to one of the most important motifs of 19th-century literature. Keeping the material and the mythic aspects of exile in dialogue throughout, the study contributes to current debates in Romantic studies about travel writing, cosmopolitanism and theories of affect.Less

The Artistry of Exile

Jane Stabler

Published in print: 2013-10-24

This book explores the ways in which exile concentrates the aesthetics of two generations of 19th-century British writers who felt forced to leave England and chose to live in Italy. Focusing on the Pisan circle (Byron, the Shelleys, Leigh Hunt, and the Williamses), the next generation of exiles, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and the mobile intermediaries who connected both groups (Anna Jameson, Walter Savage Landor, and Lady Blessington), the book traces the complex legacy of Byron and the Shelleys for the English in Italy in the 19th century. Self-consciously ostracized, singly or in groups, these writers favoured discursive modes of literary creation and used the disjunctions of exile to probe, challenge, and seek answers to compelling questions about literature, art, religion, law, history, and politics. Exile has always been a dialogical condition, fostering reflection on the difference between here and there, then and now, presence and absence. This book re-examines the literary traditions that influence the layered forms of exiled writing. Looking at the interaction of classical and Middle-Age writing with the mixed genres produced by English writers who rejected insular domestic mores and immersed themselves in European culture, the book offers a fresh approach to one of the most important motifs of 19th-century literature. Keeping the material and the mythic aspects of exile in dialogue throughout, the study contributes to current debates in Romantic studies about travel writing, cosmopolitanism and theories of affect.

This study analyses the autos sacramentales, or Eucharistic plays, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). It focusses on their relationship to the changing currents of philosophical thought in the ...
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This study analyses the autos sacramentales, or Eucharistic plays, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). It focusses on their relationship to the changing currents of philosophical thought in the late-seventeenth century Hispanic world, from a mindset characterized by scepticism, Neostoicism, and suspicion of the material world as a source of truth, to an empirical approach to the natural world that understood the information received by the senses as a fallible, yet useful, provisional source of knowledge. By examining each play in turn, along with the introductory loa with which they were intended to be performed, the study explores how each drama seeks to integrate empirical ideas with a Catholic understanding of transubstantiation. At the same time, each individual study identifies new sources for these plays, and demonstrates how these illuminate, or nuance, present readings of the works. The study of El divino Narciso employs a previously little-known source to illuminate its Christological readings, as well as Sor Juana’s engagement with notions of wit and conceptism. The analysis of El cetro de José explores her presentation of different approaches to perception to emphasize the importance of both the material and the transcendent in understanding the sacraments. The final section, on San Hermenegildo, explores the influence of the Christianized stoicism of Justus Lipsius, and demonstrates how Sor Juana used this work to attempt her most ambitious reconciliation of an empirical approach to the material world with a Neostoic approach to Christian morality and orthodox Catholic sacramental theology.Less

Alice Brooke

Published in print: 2018-04-05

This study analyses the autos sacramentales, or Eucharistic plays, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–95). It focusses on their relationship to the changing currents of philosophical thought in the late-seventeenth century Hispanic world, from a mindset characterized by scepticism, Neostoicism, and suspicion of the material world as a source of truth, to an empirical approach to the natural world that understood the information received by the senses as a fallible, yet useful, provisional source of knowledge. By examining each play in turn, along with the introductory loa with which they were intended to be performed, the study explores how each drama seeks to integrate empirical ideas with a Catholic understanding of transubstantiation. At the same time, each individual study identifies new sources for these plays, and demonstrates how these illuminate, or nuance, present readings of the works. The study of El divino Narciso employs a previously little-known source to illuminate its Christological readings, as well as Sor Juana’s engagement with notions of wit and conceptism. The analysis of El cetro de José explores her presentation of different approaches to perception to emphasize the importance of both the material and the transcendent in understanding the sacraments. The final section, on San Hermenegildo, explores the influence of the Christianized stoicism of Justus Lipsius, and demonstrates how Sor Juana used this work to attempt her most ambitious reconciliation of an empirical approach to the material world with a Neostoic approach to Christian morality and orthodox Catholic sacramental theology.

Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape ...
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Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape his work throughout his career. This book looks at the whole of this corpus, at the nature of short fiction, and at how Balzac's novels developed from his stories — at the links between literary genesis and genre. It explores the roles of short fiction in Balzac' s creation, its part in producing effects of virtuality and perspective, and reflects ultimately on the relationship between brevity and length in La Comédie humaine.Less

Balzac's Shorter Fictions : Genesis and Genre

Tim Farrant

Published in print: 2002-02-14

Balzac's reputation is as a novelist. But short stories make up over half La Comédie humaine, in addition to scores of other tales and articles. Short forms appear early in Balzac's output, and shape his work throughout his career. This book looks at the whole of this corpus, at the nature of short fiction, and at how Balzac's novels developed from his stories — at the links between literary genesis and genre. It explores the roles of short fiction in Balzac' s creation, its part in producing effects of virtuality and perspective, and reflects ultimately on the relationship between brevity and length in La Comédie humaine.

This book provides an examination of Baudelaire's art criticism and its relationship with his creative writing. It is the first book in English to treat in one volume the diverse aspects of the ...
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This book provides an examination of Baudelaire's art criticism and its relationship with his creative writing. It is the first book in English to treat in one volume the diverse aspects of the subject: the principal aesthetic ideas; the importance of Delacroix, Boudin, Meryon, Guys, and Manet; the essays on laughter and caricature; and the language and rhetoric of the Salons and other critical writings. The title reflects Baudelaire's conviction, which emphasizes in relation to Delacroix, Daumier, Guys, and Wagner, that all art, whether it is painting, poetry or music, springs from the memory of the artist and speaks to the memory of the consumer of that art. This idea, exemplified in his own creative writing, extends to criticism itself, which is seen primarily as a phenomenon of recognition, and it is that sense of recognition that the author has sought to emphasize throughout.Less

Baudelaire and the Art of Memory

J. A. Hiddleston

Published in print: 1999-07-29

This book provides an examination of Baudelaire's art criticism and its relationship with his creative writing. It is the first book in English to treat in one volume the diverse aspects of the subject: the principal aesthetic ideas; the importance of Delacroix, Boudin, Meryon, Guys, and Manet; the essays on laughter and caricature; and the language and rhetoric of the Salons and other critical writings. The title reflects Baudelaire's conviction, which emphasizes in relation to Delacroix, Daumier, Guys, and Wagner, that all art, whether it is painting, poetry or music, springs from the memory of the artist and speaks to the memory of the consumer of that art. This idea, exemplified in his own creative writing, extends to criticism itself, which is seen primarily as a phenomenon of recognition, and it is that sense of recognition that the author has sought to emphasize throughout.

Exploring the work of the major nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), this book examines how and why Baudelaire’s poetry has inspired so many composers to set it to music in ...
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Exploring the work of the major nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), this book examines how and why Baudelaire’s poetry has inspired so many composers to set it to music in different ways. The author proposes a new model for analysing song, through an ‘assemblage’ approach, which examines the complex relationships formed between common features of poetry and music, including metre/prosody, form/structure, sound properties/repetition, and semantics. The model also factors in the realities of song as a live performance genre, revealing which parameters of song emerge as standard for French text-setting and where composers diverge in their approach. The specific case studies that make up the second half of the book focus on Baudelaire song sets produced by European composers between 1880 and 1930, specifically Maurice Rollinat, Gustave Charpentier, Alexander Gretchaninov, Louis Vierne, and Alban Berg. Using this corpus, the assemblage model is tested to uncover new findings about what happens to Baudelaire’s poetry when it is set to music. Analysing Baudelaire’s poetry within song settings uncovers richer features of the texts that we might otherwise not see or hear. Examining each song setting in close detail confirms that there are no overt resonances between the types of poems selected for musical interpretation, just as there is no single, perfect ‘ideal’ setting of Baudelaire.Less

Baudelaire in Song : 1880-1930

Helen Abbott

Published in print: 2017-11-09

Exploring the work of the major nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), this book examines how and why Baudelaire’s poetry has inspired so many composers to set it to music in different ways. The author proposes a new model for analysing song, through an ‘assemblage’ approach, which examines the complex relationships formed between common features of poetry and music, including metre/prosody, form/structure, sound properties/repetition, and semantics. The model also factors in the realities of song as a live performance genre, revealing which parameters of song emerge as standard for French text-setting and where composers diverge in their approach. The specific case studies that make up the second half of the book focus on Baudelaire song sets produced by European composers between 1880 and 1930, specifically Maurice Rollinat, Gustave Charpentier, Alexander Gretchaninov, Louis Vierne, and Alban Berg. Using this corpus, the assemblage model is tested to uncover new findings about what happens to Baudelaire’s poetry when it is set to music. Analysing Baudelaire’s poetry within song settings uncovers richer features of the texts that we might otherwise not see or hear. Examining each song setting in close detail confirms that there are no overt resonances between the types of poems selected for musical interpretation, just as there is no single, perfect ‘ideal’ setting of Baudelaire.

The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the ...
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The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the genre of the prose poem itself. The book considers Baudelaire's choice of this genre and the way in which he seeks to define it, both paratextually and textually. It examines the ways in which the prose poem depends on dualities and déboublements as forms of lyrical and narrative difference which, in their turn, reveal ideological otherness and declare the oppositionality of the prose poem. Finally, the book demonstrates a relationship between these forms of otherness and Baudelaire's theory of the popular comic arts and, in doing so, proposes that the prose poems should be read as literary caricature.Less

Baudelaire's Prose Poems : The Practice and Politics of Irony

Sonya Stephens

Published in print: 1999-10-28

The aim of this book is to offer a new reading of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en Prose that demonstrates the significance of ironic otherness for the theory and functioning of the work and for the genre of the prose poem itself. The book considers Baudelaire's choice of this genre and the way in which he seeks to define it, both paratextually and textually. It examines the ways in which the prose poem depends on dualities and déboublements as forms of lyrical and narrative difference which, in their turn, reveal ideological otherness and declare the oppositionality of the prose poem. Finally, the book demonstrates a relationship between these forms of otherness and Baudelaire's theory of the popular comic arts and, in doing so, proposes that the prose poems should be read as literary caricature.

This book is a major study of European tourism during the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. The author demonstrates the ways in which the distinction between tourist ...
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This book is a major study of European tourism during the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. The author demonstrates the ways in which the distinction between tourist and traveller has developed and how the circulation of the two terms influenced how nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers on Europe viewed themselves and presented themselves in writing. Drawing upon a wide range of texts from literature, travel writing, guidebooks, periodicals, and business histories, the book shows how a democratizing and institutionalizing tourism gave rise to new formulations about what constitutes ‘authentic’ cultural experience. Authentic culture was represented as being in the secret precincts of the ‘beaten track’ where it could be discovered only by the sensitive true traveller and not the vulgar tourist. Major writers such as Byron, Wordsworth, Frances Trollope, Dickens, Henry James, and Forster are examined in the light of the influential Murray and Baedeker guide books. This elegantly written book draws links with debates in cultural studies concerning the ideology of leisure and concludes that in this period tourism became an exemplary cultural practice appearing to be both popularly accessible and exclusive.Less

The Beaten Track : European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to ‘Culture’, 1800–1918

James Buzard

Published in print: 1993-03-04

This book is a major study of European tourism during the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. The author demonstrates the ways in which the distinction between tourist and traveller has developed and how the circulation of the two terms influenced how nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers on Europe viewed themselves and presented themselves in writing. Drawing upon a wide range of texts from literature, travel writing, guidebooks, periodicals, and business histories, the book shows how a democratizing and institutionalizing tourism gave rise to new formulations about what constitutes ‘authentic’ cultural experience. Authentic culture was represented as being in the secret precincts of the ‘beaten track’ where it could be discovered only by the sensitive true traveller and not the vulgar tourist. Major writers such as Byron, Wordsworth, Frances Trollope, Dickens, Henry James, and Forster are examined in the light of the influential Murray and Baedeker guide books. This elegantly written book draws links with debates in cultural studies concerning the ideology of leisure and concludes that in this period tourism became an exemplary cultural practice appearing to be both popularly accessible and exclusive.

Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid ...
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Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin, it examines, within a broadly Bakhtinian theoretical framework, the relationship between their self-consciousness and their cultural and political context. The texts are shown to challenge notions about the nature and function of literature fundamental to both Soviet and Anglo-American criticism. In particular, although metafictional strategies may seem designed to confirm assumptions about the aesthetic autonomy of the literary text, their effect is to reveal the shortcomings of such assumptions. The texts discussed take us beyond conventional understandings of metafiction by highlighting the need for a theoretically informed account of the history and reception of Soviet literature in which the inescapability of politics and ideology is no longer acknowledged grudgingly, but is instead celebrated.Less

Beyond Metafiction : Self-Consciousness in Soviet Literature

David Shepherd

Published in print: 1992-10-08

Although metafiction has been the subject of much critical and theoretical writing, this is the first full-length study of its place in Soviet literature. Focusing on metafictional works by Leonid Leonov, Marietta Shaginyan, Konstantin Vaginov, and Veniamin Kaverin, it examines, within a broadly Bakhtinian theoretical framework, the relationship between their self-consciousness and their cultural and political context. The texts are shown to challenge notions about the nature and function of literature fundamental to both Soviet and Anglo-American criticism. In particular, although metafictional strategies may seem designed to confirm assumptions about the aesthetic autonomy of the literary text, their effect is to reveal the shortcomings of such assumptions. The texts discussed take us beyond conventional understandings of metafiction by highlighting the need for a theoretically informed account of the history and reception of Soviet literature in which the inescapability of politics and ideology is no longer acknowledged grudgingly, but is instead celebrated.

This book explores the relations between literature and biography in France by tracing their history since the emergence of the two terms during the 18th century. This is when term ‘biographie’ first ...
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This book explores the relations between literature and biography in France by tracing their history since the emergence of the two terms during the 18th century. This is when term ‘biographie’ first saw the light of day in the French language, and the word ‘littérature’ began to acquire its modern sense of writing marked by an aesthetic character. Arguing that the ‘idea of literature’ is inherently open to revision and contestation, the book examines the way in which biographically orientated texts have been engaged in turning literature into a question about its own definition. At the same time, it tracks the evolving forms of biographical writing in French culture, and proposes a reappraisal of biography that takes account not only of its forms, but also of its functions. The capacity of biography to intervene in debates about definitions of the literary argues for the need to consider this functional dimension of biographical writing. Although the study has important theoretical implications as regards both biography and the literary, it is intended first and foremost as a history, offering an account of the development of French literature through a dual focus on the question of literature and its relations with biography, and tracing the changing ideas about literature and chronicling the different forms taken by biography in the period. It includes readings of major authors and texts in the light of these concerns, from Rousseau to the ‘life-writing’ of contemporary authors such as Michon and Roubaud. Other authors discussed include Mme de Staël, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Baudelaire, Nerval, Mallarmé, Schwob, Proust, Gide, Leiris, Sartre, Genet, Barthes, and Laporte.Less

Biography and the Question of Literature in France

Ann Jefferson

Published in print: 2007-01-04

This book explores the relations between literature and biography in France by tracing their history since the emergence of the two terms during the 18th century. This is when term ‘biographie’ first saw the light of day in the French language, and the word ‘littérature’ began to acquire its modern sense of writing marked by an aesthetic character. Arguing that the ‘idea of literature’ is inherently open to revision and contestation, the book examines the way in which biographically orientated texts have been engaged in turning literature into a question about its own definition. At the same time, it tracks the evolving forms of biographical writing in French culture, and proposes a reappraisal of biography that takes account not only of its forms, but also of its functions. The capacity of biography to intervene in debates about definitions of the literary argues for the need to consider this functional dimension of biographical writing. Although the study has important theoretical implications as regards both biography and the literary, it is intended first and foremost as a history, offering an account of the development of French literature through a dual focus on the question of literature and its relations with biography, and tracing the changing ideas about literature and chronicling the different forms taken by biography in the period. It includes readings of major authors and texts in the light of these concerns, from Rousseau to the ‘life-writing’ of contemporary authors such as Michon and Roubaud. Other authors discussed include Mme de Staël, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Baudelaire, Nerval, Mallarmé, Schwob, Proust, Gide, Leiris, Sartre, Genet, Barthes, and Laporte.

This study provides a detailed investigation of Jorge Luis Borges’s development as an author in light of (1) Franz Kafka’s influence on Borges’s writing and (2) Borges’s relationship with his father, ...
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This study provides a detailed investigation of Jorge Luis Borges’s development as an author in light of (1) Franz Kafka’s influence on Borges’s writing and (2) Borges’s relationship with his father, Jorge Guillermo Borges (Borges père, a failed author). Reading Borges’s stories with respect to the influence of these literary and familial precursors explains some of his aims as a writer. Borges believed that much of Kafka’s writing derived from his personal experiences, particularly his relationship with his father. Following Borges’s lead, this book looks at how reading Kafka helped Borges mediate and make productive use of his relationship with Borges père. It offers an analysis of Borges père’s writing, Borges’s critical and creative writing on Kafka, and the short stories that Borges modelled on Kafka—both openly and indirectly. Particular attention is paid to the concepts that Borges identified as Kafka’s obsessions: subordination, infinity, and hierarchical relationships, which Borges referred to as the ‘patria potestad’. Kafka’s influence is evident not only in the stories in which Borges was intentionally imitating Kafka—‘La lotería en Babilonia’ (1941), ‘La biblioteca de Babel’ (1941), and ‘El Congreso’ (1971)—but also in many other pieces, especially those in Ficciones. Reading Borges’s writing with respect to Kafkian themes demonstrates the degree to which Borges was focused not just on the individual’s subordinate place in an infinite hierarchy, but also on the repercussions these circumstances had for a struggling author who was seeking to define himself through his writing.Less

Borges and Kafka : Sons and Writers

Sarah Roger

Published in print: 2017-01-12

This study provides a detailed investigation of Jorge Luis Borges’s development as an author in light of (1) Franz Kafka’s influence on Borges’s writing and (2) Borges’s relationship with his father, Jorge Guillermo Borges (Borges père, a failed author). Reading Borges’s stories with respect to the influence of these literary and familial precursors explains some of his aims as a writer. Borges believed that much of Kafka’s writing derived from his personal experiences, particularly his relationship with his father. Following Borges’s lead, this book looks at how reading Kafka helped Borges mediate and make productive use of his relationship with Borges père. It offers an analysis of Borges père’s writing, Borges’s critical and creative writing on Kafka, and the short stories that Borges modelled on Kafka—both openly and indirectly. Particular attention is paid to the concepts that Borges identified as Kafka’s obsessions: subordination, infinity, and hierarchical relationships, which Borges referred to as the ‘patria potestad’. Kafka’s influence is evident not only in the stories in which Borges was intentionally imitating Kafka—‘La lotería en Babilonia’ (1941), ‘La biblioteca de Babel’ (1941), and ‘El Congreso’ (1971)—but also in many other pieces, especially those in Ficciones. Reading Borges’s writing with respect to Kafkian themes demonstrates the degree to which Borges was focused not just on the individual’s subordinate place in an infinite hierarchy, but also on the repercussions these circumstances had for a struggling author who was seeking to define himself through his writing.

The book argues that the stylistic features that prompted the criminal indictment of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal were the products of an intense struggle and negotiation with a culture of ...
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The book argues that the stylistic features that prompted the criminal indictment of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal were the products of an intense struggle and negotiation with a culture of censorship. It maintains that the stylistic features celebrated as hallmarks of modernism—Flaubert’s free indirect discourse, Baudelaire’s multiple poetic personae—are in fact the products of this struggle with censorship. The narrative of modernism that begins with the autonomous writer and extends forward to the autonomous, depersonalized, and autoreferential artwork tends to detach writing from interaction with its socioeconomic context. But censorship not only shaped the very composition of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal but affected their reception and continues to operate in the field of literary criticism. Far from manifesting the autonomy proclaimed by modernism’s defenders, both works show (and retain) signs of self-censorship or, more bluntly, collaboration with a regime of ethical and political censorship. French modernism begins and remains deeply embedded in a culture of censorship whose proprieties, both literary and social, Baudelaire and Flaubert nevertheless challenged and transgressed.Less

The Censorship Effect : Baudelaire, Flaubert, and the Formation of French Modernism

William Olmsted

Published in print: 2016-03-01

The book argues that the stylistic features that prompted the criminal indictment of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal were the products of an intense struggle and negotiation with a culture of censorship. It maintains that the stylistic features celebrated as hallmarks of modernism—Flaubert’s free indirect discourse, Baudelaire’s multiple poetic personae—are in fact the products of this struggle with censorship. The narrative of modernism that begins with the autonomous writer and extends forward to the autonomous, depersonalized, and autoreferential artwork tends to detach writing from interaction with its socioeconomic context. But censorship not only shaped the very composition of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal but affected their reception and continues to operate in the field of literary criticism. Far from manifesting the autonomy proclaimed by modernism’s defenders, both works show (and retain) signs of self-censorship or, more bluntly, collaboration with a regime of ethical and political censorship. French modernism begins and remains deeply embedded in a culture of censorship whose proprieties, both literary and social, Baudelaire and Flaubert nevertheless challenged and transgressed.

This book relates Cervantes' poetics of comic fiction to the common framework of assumptions, values, and ideas held by Spaniards of the Golden Age about the comic and the kinds of writing which ...
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This book relates Cervantes' poetics of comic fiction to the common framework of assumptions, values, and ideas held by Spaniards of the Golden Age about the comic and the kinds of writing which expressed it. This collective mentality underwent significant evolution in the period 1500 to 1630, and the factors which caused it are reflected in the ways in which the major comic genres (satire, the picaresque, the comedia, the novella) are re-launched, transformed, and theoretically rationalized around 1600, the time when Don Quixote and Cervantes' most famous novellas were written. Though Cervantes is universally acknowledged to be a master of comic fiction, his poetics have never before been considered from that specific angle, nor in such ample scope. In particular, the book sets out to identify the differences between Cervantes' poetics and the conceptions of comic fiction of his contemporaries, including Mateo Alemán.Less

Cervantes and the Comic Mind of his Age

Anthony Close

Published in print: 2000-09-28

This book relates Cervantes' poetics of comic fiction to the common framework of assumptions, values, and ideas held by Spaniards of the Golden Age about the comic and the kinds of writing which expressed it. This collective mentality underwent significant evolution in the period 1500 to 1630, and the factors which caused it are reflected in the ways in which the major comic genres (satire, the picaresque, the comedia, the novella) are re-launched, transformed, and theoretically rationalized around 1600, the time when Don Quixote and Cervantes' most famous novellas were written. Though Cervantes is universally acknowledged to be a master of comic fiction, his poetics have never before been considered from that specific angle, nor in such ample scope. In particular, the book sets out to identify the differences between Cervantes' poetics and the conceptions of comic fiction of his contemporaries, including Mateo Alemán.

Two sets of related issues prompt this study: the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the rise of the Cervantine novel in Spain. The conquest, exploration, and colonization of the ...
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Two sets of related issues prompt this study: the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the rise of the Cervantine novel in Spain. The conquest, exploration, and colonization of the Indies resonate through Cervantes's two novels, Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and the Persiles (1617), both fortified by imperialism. Cervantes begins publishing in the 1580s, just as the might of imperial Spain turned from Europe towards the Atlantic. Twice refused emigration papers to America – which he depicts as the ‘refuge and haven of all the desperate men of Spain’ – Cervantes turned to fiction. His novels internalize many colonial discourses and at least four genres implicated in Spain's New World enterprise: the Books of Chivalry, the utopias, the colonial war epic, and American ethnohistory. The first full-length study to move beyond an inventory of Cervantes's references to the Indies – to Mexico and Peru, cannibals and tobacco, parrots and alligators – this book interprets his novels as a transatlantic, cross-cultural, and multi-linguistic achievement.Less

Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World

Diana de Armas Wilson

Published in print: 2000-12-07

Two sets of related issues prompt this study: the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the rise of the Cervantine novel in Spain. The conquest, exploration, and colonization of the Indies resonate through Cervantes's two novels, Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and the Persiles (1617), both fortified by imperialism. Cervantes begins publishing in the 1580s, just as the might of imperial Spain turned from Europe towards the Atlantic. Twice refused emigration papers to America – which he depicts as the ‘refuge and haven of all the desperate men of Spain’ – Cervantes turned to fiction. His novels internalize many colonial discourses and at least four genres implicated in Spain's New World enterprise: the Books of Chivalry, the utopias, the colonial war epic, and American ethnohistory. The first full-length study to move beyond an inventory of Cervantes's references to the Indies – to Mexico and Peru, cannibals and tobacco, parrots and alligators – this book interprets his novels as a transatlantic, cross-cultural, and multi-linguistic achievement.

This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de ...
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This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de geste. The chansons de geste are seen as ‘formulaic’, composed from a public fund of pre-existant and primarily oral narratives and motifs; romance on the other hand, is seen as a more sophisticated product of a newly ‘literary’ story-telling, in line with the more complex social and political conditions of the time. The author rejects this ‘developmental’ model of literary history and, through detailed readings of large numbers of texts – from the well-known Renaut de Montauban or Raoul de Cambrai to the unjustly neglected Doon de la Roche or Orson de Beauvais – reveals the simultaneity of the chansons de geste and romance in medieval culture. Drawing tellingly on recent literary and feminist theory, the author argues that the chanson de geste and romance are engaged in a productive and telling dialogue; moreover, each genre illuminates the ‘political unconscious’ of the other: those political conflicts and contradictions that the text attempts to evade and disguise. In particular, the author contends that romance brings with it new forms of sexism and patriarchy – forms much closer to those of the present – and that these need to be read against the politics of sexual difference inscribed in chansons de geste.Less

The Chansons de Geste in the Age of Romance : Political Fictions

Sarah Kay

Published in print: 1995-12-28

This is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have traditionally seen romance as a superior development of the chanson de geste. The chansons de geste are seen as ‘formulaic’, composed from a public fund of pre-existant and primarily oral narratives and motifs; romance on the other hand, is seen as a more sophisticated product of a newly ‘literary’ story-telling, in line with the more complex social and political conditions of the time. The author rejects this ‘developmental’ model of literary history and, through detailed readings of large numbers of texts – from the well-known Renaut de Montauban or Raoul de Cambrai to the unjustly neglected Doon de la Roche or Orson de Beauvais – reveals the simultaneity of the chansons de geste and romance in medieval culture. Drawing tellingly on recent literary and feminist theory, the author argues that the chanson de geste and romance are engaged in a productive and telling dialogue; moreover, each genre illuminates the ‘political unconscious’ of the other: those political conflicts and contradictions that the text attempts to evade and disguise. In particular, the author contends that romance brings with it new forms of sexism and patriarchy – forms much closer to those of the present – and that these need to be read against the politics of sexual difference inscribed in chansons de geste.

Luigi Pirandello is best known in the English-speaking world for his radical challenge to traditional Western theatre with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author. But theatre is just one ...
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Luigi Pirandello is best known in the English-speaking world for his radical challenge to traditional Western theatre with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author. But theatre is just one manifestation of his experiments with language, which led to a remarkable collection of novels, short stories, and essays as well as his work for a film industry then in its infancy. This study, which is based on the view that Pirandello's writings are most fruitfully discussed in a European context, takes as its starting-point the author's belief in the primacy of the literary character in a creative process, which is necessarily conflictual. The book argues that all Pirandello's characters are engaged in a continual performance, which transcends the genre distinction between narrative and dramatic forms. In this performance it is the spoken word in which the characters invest most heavily as they struggle to sustain an identity of their own, tell their life-stories, and assert themselves before their most prominent antagonist, the author himself.Less

Characters and Authors in Luigi Pirandello

Ann Hallamore Caesar

Published in print: 1998-01-22

Luigi Pirandello is best known in the English-speaking world for his radical challenge to traditional Western theatre with plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author. But theatre is just one manifestation of his experiments with language, which led to a remarkable collection of novels, short stories, and essays as well as his work for a film industry then in its infancy. This study, which is based on the view that Pirandello's writings are most fruitfully discussed in a European context, takes as its starting-point the author's belief in the primacy of the literary character in a creative process, which is necessarily conflictual. The book argues that all Pirandello's characters are engaged in a continual performance, which transcends the genre distinction between narrative and dramatic forms. In this performance it is the spoken word in which the characters invest most heavily as they struggle to sustain an identity of their own, tell their life-stories, and assert themselves before their most prominent antagonist, the author himself.

This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been ...
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This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been available. Most treatments of such influences do not take sufficient account of the material contexts in which these sources were available to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. Not only that, but the authors themselves were responsible for some of this commentary material, from Dante's own prosimetra Vita nova and Convivio, to the extensive commentary accompanying Boccaccio's Teseida. The startling example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in his copy of the Decameron, copied in 1384, is discussed in detail for the first time. His refiguring of Griselda offers an important perspective on the reception of this story that is exactly contemporary with Chaucer. This book offers a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Tales through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.Less

Chaucer and Italian Textuality

K. P. Clarke

Published in print: 2011-07-07

This book breaks important new ground in the study of Chaucer's various engagements with Italian literary culture, taking a more dynamic approach to Chaucer's Italian sources than has previously been available. Most treatments of such influences do not take sufficient account of the material contexts in which these sources were available to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Manuscripts of the major works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch circulated in a variety of formats, and often the margins of their texts were loci for extensive commentary and glossing. These traditions of glossing and commentary represent one of the most striking features of fourteenth-century Italian literary culture. Not only that, but the authors themselves were responsible for some of this commentary material, from Dante's own prosimetra Vita nova and Convivio, to the extensive commentary accompanying Boccaccio's Teseida. The startling example of Francesco d'Amaretto Mannelli's glosses in his copy of the Decameron, copied in 1384, is discussed in detail for the first time. His refiguring of Griselda offers an important perspective on the reception of this story that is exactly contemporary with Chaucer. This book offers a new perspective on Chaucer and Italy by highlighting the materiality of his sources, reconstructing his textual, codicological horizon of expectation. It provides new ways of thinking about Chaucer's access to, and use of, these Italian sources, stimulating, in turn, new ways of reading his work. This attention to the materiality of Chaucer's sources is further explored and developed by reading the Tales through their early fourteenth-century manuscripts, taking account not just of the text but also of the numerous marginal glosses. Within this context, then, the question of Chaucer's authorship of some of these glosses is considered.

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